In Defense of America’s War Colleges
As an academic who spent the first eighteen years of my career in civilian higher education, I have a unique perspective on the nation’s war colleges and the value they bring to America’s national defense. While much of American higher education has fallen down on the job, promoting political orthodoxy, constraining free speech, and eroding public trust, our war colleges have remained focused on educating military leaders to fight and win the nation’s wars.
It was against this backdrop that I was surprised to read an anonymously published article in American Greatness titled “Making the War Colleges Great Again.” In a pointed critique of the nation’s senior service institutions, the author contends that war colleges are little more than clones of the Ivy League, composed of ideologically charged faculty attempting to promote globalist, neo-Marxist, and “woke” doctrines. Far from preparing leaders to win military conflicts, the author contends that the war colleges teach military personnel to “think like politicians, State Department employees, and military contractors.” Asserting that the strategies that led to setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan were crafted by war college graduates, the author calls for immediate reform.
As the Dean of one of America’s war colleges, the College of International Security Affairs, I welcome constructive criticism from students, faculty, alumni, and members of the public. While we endeavor to provide the best education possible to our warfighters, there is always room for improvement. Such criticism is most effective when grounded in an accurate understanding of how these institutions actually function. Although I cannot speak to the author’s individual experience, I can say that several of his key assertions do not align with what I have observed during my time at the United States Army War College (USAWC) and, more recently, at the National Defense University (NDU). To illustrate this point, consider three examples in which the anonymous author makes assertions about war colleges that do not withstand closer scrutiny.
First, arguing that our war colleges’ coursework is politicized, he demands that schools “eliminate all curriculum that disguises wokeness as being a military matter.” However, rather than identifying politicized coursework or lesson plans, he provides links to two research papers not tied to any war college curriculum. The first paper, published in 2017 by the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), the research arm of the Army War College, argues that climate change is a critical element of national security strategy. The second paper, published in 2022 by the Uniformed Services University, the medical education arm of the Department of War (DOW), examines potential bias in the Army’s talent management systems. One may reasonably debate the merits of either thesis. What is less clear, however, is how two individual articles, whatever their conclusions, demonstrate the prevalence of woke themes in the nation’s war college curricula. Indeed, war colleges produce studies on a wide variety of topics that reflect views across the ideological spectrum. Two studies reflecting a left-leaning perspective on a policy question provide little insight into what is actually taught in war college classrooms.
This is not to suggest that war colleges always get it right when teaching topics related to policy controversies. Whatever our personal views, as faculty we are obliged to depoliticize the curriculum by presenting competing perspectives on contemporary debates so that students can understand the full contours of a policy disagreement. At times, faculty members may allow their views to unduly shape how material is presented. When that occurs, students are encouraged to raise their concerns with the professor, or if necessary, administration. However imperfect, it is this commitment to intellectual impartiality that distinguishes us from many civilian institutions, such as Harvard, which has been the subject of criticism for politicizing elements of its curriculum. Having come from civilian higher education, where coursework often degenerates into veiled political advocacy, I found the approaches at USAWC and NDU to policy controversies remarkably evenhanded.
Second, asserting that the presence of a small number of interagency students is polluting military education, the author proposes banishing all civilians from the classroom. He states that “The civilianization of our uniformed military is a great threat to warfighting ability, and it must end.” Again, I cannot speak to what an anonymous critic experienced during his year in an unnamed war college classroom, but thinking back to my time at the Army War College, I frequently saw the value of including a small number of civilians in a predominantly military seminar. An important part of national strategy involves harmonizing the vast capabilities of the federal government in support of military power. That integration cannot occur in practice if civilian and military leaders do not understand one another’s roles, authorities, and institutional cultures. For civilian students, this means becoming familiar with the values and traditions of the military, including the meaning of the warfighter ethos. For military students, it means understanding what civilian agencies, such as State and Homeland Security, can bring to the fight and how to leverage those capabilities to consolidate gains achieved on the battlefield. The anonymous author might have a stronger case if military personnel were swamped by civilian students. At the nation’s war colleges, however, the opposite is true. The military students vastly outnumber the civilian students, and discussions tend to gravitate toward military perspectives.
Third, alleging that civilian faculty use the nation’s war colleges as “a stepping stone to a job at prestigious civilian universities,” the anonymous author demands that virtually all civilian instructors be fired and replaced by military personnel. Beyond accusing civilian faculty of being mercenaries who use the DOW for career advancement, the author goes on to claim that non-military instructors subvert the nation’s military education by steering officers toward research that will appeal to future civilian employers. He further alleges that some civilian faculty are “quite literally radicals with a visceral and vocal hatred for the current administration.” As evidence, he links to the X feed of former Naval War College professor Tom Nichols, a frequent critic of the current administration.
The claim that many civilian faculty treat the war colleges as a stepping stone to more prestigious academic posts is fundamentally mistaken. Far from being viewed as an accolade, those of us who work for the Department of War are often regarded with suspicion by faculty outside of military higher education, many of whom view us as warmongers. It is true that some faculty move from war colleges into civilian higher education. However, for most faculty, working for the DOW is a long-term career commitment, one that likely precludes a return to traditional academia, given its ambivalence toward the military.
Additionally, characterizing faculty as mercenaries is dismissive of those of us who gave up lifetime appointments in civilian higher education to support the military mission. I resigned my tenured position at Penn State to join the Army War College. As much as I loved teaching undergraduates, I could not turn down the opportunity to help support military education. I am hardly unique in this regard. Many civilian faculty members have left established careers in traditional academia because they value the mission and find working with senior military officers professionally meaningful.
To suggest that faculty should be unceremoniously ousted from their posts on the theory that they are not sufficiently loyal is short-sighted. Whatever their personal views, war college instructors serve under clear professional expectations: to teach the curriculum as directed and to present competing perspectives fairly. By serving over time, civilian faculty provide a degree of stability and continuity to the nation’s war colleges, regardless of who serves in the Oval Office. Our job is to educate military officers based on the guidance we receive from our institutions, as directed by the Secretary of War.
Finally, the very idea that non-military faculty can, and should, be fired en masse reveals a profound misunderstanding of what civilians bring to the educational enterprise. Civilian and military faculty regard our instruction as a partnership. Military faculty are highly knowledgeable about military operations, joint planning, and institutional bureaucracy. Civilian faculty bring expertise in strategy, history, language, regional affairs, and the analytical skills essential for senior-level strategic decision-making. Whereas many military instructors are relatively new to teaching, many civilian faculty arrive with decades of experience. Building on our respective strengths, military and civilian faculty together provide an educational opportunity that is simply not available in traditional academia.
In his proposal to fix the nation’s war colleges, the author makes several additional recommendations, including ending civilian accreditation, requiring military personnel to wear uniforms to class, eliminating permanent military faculty assignments, and restructuring the board of governors. While I am intrigued by some of his proposals, the fact that the author published the article anonymously makes meaningful dialogue difficult and precludes the opportunity to explore his proposed reforms more fully.
As a retired U.S. Army colonel and veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, the author has my admiration and respect. I applaud his dedication to improving our war colleges and would welcome the opportunity to speak with him about his concerns. While we may have different perspectives on how to improve joint professional military education, we both want what is best for our fighting force. As faculty, we value our alumni above all for helping us understand what we do right and where we fall short.
Matthew Woessner, Ph.D., is the Dean of Faculty and Academic Programs at the College of International Security Affairs, National Defense University. Prior to joining NDU, he served on the faculty at the Army War College and Penn State University, Harrisburg.
AI Disclosure: Dean Woessner used ChatGPT-5.2 to assist with stylistic refinement and copyediting.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of National Defense University, the Department of War, or the United States Government.